I DoFollow you…really
(credit:Yael Fran)
After the recent debacle with Google on PPP and its insistence on Nofollow tags for paid links and advertistment, I decided to find out more on this Dofollow/Nofollow tag.
What is Nofollow
Nofollow is apparently used so that spiders reaching the link will not score or rank the link. But recently, it can also mean “do not follow this link”. The initial purpose is to prevent comment spam, but Akismet stats show the tag have not reduce spam comments. Wordpress starting from ver. 1.5 have also set the Nofollow tag for all comments and trackbacks on WordPress blogs.
Join the movement
There are now a “You Comment|I Follow” movement started by Randa Clay. I like what he has done and decided to join the movement too. I believe in giving out incentives, especially if a blogger takes the effort to comment on your blog. Why shut down the linklove?
I use the Dofollow plugin from Semiologic. It’s really simple. Just install and activate. No flickering with different options. All your nofollow tags from comments are gone.
To know if the plugin is working for you, you can download the firefox extension NoDofollow. So on your blog or any site on the web, you will see nofollow links in pink and dofollow links in blue. As you can see, the links in my blog comments are now blue.
Okay, now some more resources about nofollow/dofollow:
- Ultimate list of dofollow plugins - Banish nofollow from comments and trackbacks
- CommentHunt - Search engine for dofollow blogs.
- Dofollow community @ Bumpzee
- How To Identify That A Blog Has NoFollow or DoFollow Comments
- Technoratic: tagged Dofollow
- Does Dofollow Influence Your Willingness to Comment?
- 13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck
So make a choice Follow or No Follow?
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December 2nd, 2007 at 1:21 am
Glad to see you join in mate..
even I have dofollow on unneglectable, however don’t say it out loud
I tend to think of it as an unspoken gift to those who post genuine comments on my blog..
February 29th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Good for you! I fully appreciate why Google are trying to keep links defined in such a way as to determine whether they are a “vote” or not, but it does take the incentive out of posting on other people’s blogs. I feel that having a link in your signature or comment is a small but fair reward for contributing in a meaningful way and it isn’t necessarily right for Google to take that away.
Of course a “dofollow” link has SEO benefits for your chosen website that you link to, but to get it you have contributed to someone else’s content. What goes around comes around… so Google should appreciate that aspect. Fortunately, Yahoo still spider / index content over a nofollow, they just don’t add it to your link popularity score and ASK ignore the nofollow/dofollow attribute altogether so Google’s dirty trick hasn’t spoiled the benefits to commenting entirely. I can’t remember MSN’s position on it, but that information came out of a recent conference where nofollow was discussed.
March 4th, 2008 at 1:47 am
I am agree with you and i also go ahead with do follow.
March 10th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
This is awesome! After checking out some of these sites I see they are still getting quality comments!
May i will put this things in my blog too
BTW, will it increase technorati rank ??
April 11th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Thank you for this tool’s I find them useful, especially FF extension.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:31 am
I think that was a pretty good post. I couldn’t do it
. Keep up the good work.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:04 am
hmmm… I like a blog post that makes me think.